I can’t move a single muscle, actually, I can barely perceive my whole body, but I swear that as soon as I manage to find that thing that keeps on beeping I’ll smash it by throwing it down from the top floor of whatever building I am in right now.
I don’t even know where I am, I don’t know if I’m really alive, but this is my first thought.
In addition to this loud beeping I also perceive some voices, and I decide not to open my eyes.
There are two people at my side.
Ok, I got it. I am in a Confederacy hospital room.
In the end Shelv, that asshole, called a doctor and did not let me die on the concrete floor of his garage.
He needs me.
I grin in my mind.
Judging by the voices and the topic I’d say that these are two of his flunkies.
-Stable conditions. He will make it this time too-
This must be the boss of the two
-He’s the Eirdar after all. I’ve lost count of how many times we’ve patched him up, you know? This time he must have run into a refugee with guts… –
The Probie.
-It wasn’t a refugee-
-Then who the hell could have battered him up so? –
Someone snorts.
-This is not information that I can divulge- I hear something being put on the table by my side -I’m getting a coffee, you keep an eye on him-
Steps. Door. Steps. The door again.
He’s gone.
For a while I don’t hear anything.
Then the sound of a chair being dragged near me and someone who sits down.
That someone remains silent, but I perceive that he’s nervous.
Noise near my ears, sheets of paper. A whispered curse.
-And so the little brother … –
I clench the sheet with my right hand. He is on my left and doesn’t see it.
-Damn … He’s a loose cannon … –
He whispers. He counts, and reads the names of places and people.
Noises from the hallway. The noise of papers being shuffled and set back on the nightstand.
The door. Steps.
I try to sleep. For the moment.
****
He’s sitting right in front of me.
I am standing in front of him.
The desk divides us but I would rather it was a wall at least twenty centimeters thick and a mile away from me.
And in the other dimension.
He is Nakiri Shelv, Chief General of the Confederation. The best strategist existing on the planet.
My planet. It doesn’t matter about the other one. He is the best. His name is legend, together with that of Tears Eirdar. They are only playing on two different fields.
One in that of the brain, and the other in the physical field.
And I’m here in front of him ready to shit in my pants.
It’s also been a quarter of an hour that I’ve been here, ready to shit in my pants in front of him… Obviously his manners aren’t equal to his war strategy abilities, because he hasn’t even asked me to sit down.
As soon as they mentioned him all of my weariness disappeared, but my bones and muscles are starting to feel the fatigue. I know that, because of all this tension, when I’m finally able to relax, I won’t be able to get up for a whole week.
I wait.
If Nakiri Shelv decides that I have to be shot down, I believe that it would take about two seconds, maybe only one, before he passes from theory to practice.
So I wait and I don’t complain.
But I’m curious and I can’t help looking around.
His office is huge. One could easily fit in three or four of those studios that the Confederacy gives its Allies. The desk he is sitting at is made up of so much glass and metal that one could build a fairly big greenhouse out of it.
Everything is in perfect order. The few ornaments and even the papers on his desk and pens in the pen holder are all in right angles, perfectly aligned and in order.
It’s almost morbid.
I don’t realize it when he puts the fountain pen on the glass desk surface, and that’s because I’m looking at the enormous bookcase on my right.
It takes up the whole wall, this means that there should be something like a million books …
I realize that he’s expecting my attention when he closes the leather folder in which he was writing. I look at him and he stares at me.
Grey Eyes, hot as ice and set in a perfect mulatto face.
I stand at attention and do not even know if he perceives it as a joke. He stares at me for a moment, then he interlaces his fingers and talks.
His voice is low and smooth. Hypnotic. But firm and sure.
I have a feeling that if he told me to cut my throat with that paper knife there, in front of him, with that tone, I would do it. And I would even thank him for the excellent idea he had given me.
– Number 156459 b, you were summoned with no previous notification for a very specific reason. The field agent that we sent to recover what you yourself had stolen, has had some difficulty in completing his mission. –
Number 156459 b.
I heard it only once, when I was cataloged as an Ally, at the Confederation base in the second dimension, down in Akrem.
I know I have it imprinted on the small hard drive in the fake watch that I was equipped with and that I have it tattooed on my neck along with a little bar code, but I’ve never been called like that.
I have a name. My mom gave it to me, do you know that?
But I don’t say it. So that I can preserve the second thing that my mother gave me: life.
As if sensing my thoughts, he reopens the leather folder he was working on earlier and stands up. He walks while speaking to me and reading from the folder containing my record.
-Zendaru from Samirien. Age 17. Small burglary precedents. Public nuisance and – he pauses, imperceptibly flickers an eyebrow-Indecent exposure in public places? –
I cough.
I would like to say that it’s a long story, but I swallow my thoughts and I choose to remain silent.
And it is certainly more decorous than explaining what happened that time.
The General lets it go and continues, glancing occasionally at the folder.- Did you at least realize what you did in your last crime? – He asks me.
I answer -Yes, sir. And I’m very sorry. I never thought that that object was really the Iantor, ok, it was guarded, but not like I thought it would have been, I thought that-
He interrupts me raising a hand.
I freeze as if that gesture cut my throat.
It’s just that when I start talking I…
He stares at me in silence and I would much rather be anywhere else, even in the flames of hell, but not there. Then he finally says.
-As I was saying, the Ally sent to clean up your mistake, 156459 b… –
Zendaru. Thank you.
– … has some difficulty in completing his mission. Your theft accomplice is a former ally, who had been deposed and stripped of his powers through the Sirmh seal. Now, thanks to your contribution, not only has he got all his powers back by bypassing the seal and using the Iantor directly, but he has managed to cross the area controlled by the Shield, come back here with the Iantor, leaving our world, Passing Zone excluded, without magic … –
Yeah I know, I screwed up.
Yes I know, I’m a jerk.
How many times must they tell me that I created one of the greatest damages in the history of this and the other world?
This guy, as far as I know, or rather, as they explained to me afterwards, and I stress the word afterwards, was here to collect points.
Then he freaked out, and turned against the Confederacy. My Hero grabbed him by the hair and sent him back home to the other world.
He was tried and sealed in Akrem, so that he could not get access to the Iantor like we have always done in order to use magic. So he ran out of magic and got pissed off. And found nothing better to do than to make fun of me and commission me with that theft.
Once in possession of the Iantor, the seal put on him by the Confederation becomes useless, because he can take his dose of magic directly from the Iantor, by simply touching it.
And fuck the Sirmh seal.
However, to make everything worse, the above mentioned gentleman decided to play the refugee role and passed to this dimension. Being too far away from our world, the Iantor became unusable for my people, and magic is no longer working in the second world without its catalyst.
Final result: I steal a fucking tacky object and the whole world stops using magic.
And not only that. There is also the risk that this world realizes, with our catalyst in their house, that there IS magic, and they start using it in our place, using up the last reserves of magical energy we have left.
Which, as a matter of fact, resides in their world, even if they do not know it.
Throughout this summary the rest of us look bad.
Yes, we stole their magical energy. But in short, their world was full of it and they didn’t even know they had it, and we were running out of it…
Meanwhile, the General proceeds.
-Now: taking into account that you have been here for six months and have completed your thirtieth mission in such a short amount of time and, above all, that you are the cause of the damage that we are trying to fix, I have a deal for you. – He sits and stares at me with a look of, “either you accept it or I will make your life a living hell and only because there is too much bureaucratic paperwork to do to give you directly to rabid dogs.”- the remaining seven hundred and ninety-three points you need to collect in order to be a free man again, will be nullified if you complete a single mission: help the above mentioned Ally. Once you retrieve the Iantor and eliminate the man who now holds it, you will be able to return to your world as a free citizen. –
Sure, if I can go back.
He has the Iantor now. And from what I have heard he was very powerful, and now that he has his powers back, without the restrictions of the bracelet that all Allies need to carry here, he is at least three times stronger than me. Not to mention that he was here to collect a ton of points for some multiple murder …
He’s only condemning me to a more twisted death.
He stares at me in silence and understands that I’m not stupid, even if my record confirms the opposite.
-Think about it, collecting seven hundred and ninety-three points, even if it means dealing with simpler enemies, is still a gamble. Just a simple distraction and the less powerful enemy will be able to kill you. Here you would only have one chance of being killed, not nearly eight hundred. –
He is trying to stun me with statistics, but I will resist.
-Not to mention that you would not be alone. Yours will be a support job, you will have to co-operate with a much more experienced agent than you. Tears Eirdar is_-
– I accept-
I spoke the words before thinking. Like that, in one go.
The General was surprised too. But only for a moment. He smiles and sits down.
-So you accept? –
-Yes, sir. –
The Eirdar.
For the love of God.
I’d give up a hand just to be able to say that I tied one of his shoes, imagine having the chance to fight at his side.
Ok, I’m still shitting in my pants, but if I must die, fuck, I’ll do it alongside my Hero.
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